AS EVER, BUT ESPECIALLY in our present state of civilizational malaise, there is a need for figures with the power to inspire — men who in less confused and cynical times would have been unabashedly described as heroic. One such figure is Corporal John Alan Coey, a young soldier who has perhaps not yet fully received the tribute he deserves though he has been dead these past 37 years.

In March of 1972 Coey, a young American from Ohio, boarded a flight to white-ruled Rhodesia, a country then facing United Nations sanctions and very soon to find itself beleaguered by the forces of communist-backed black nationalism. Only a day prior to his departure Coey had graduated from Ohio State University with a degree in Forestry. He had also recently been released, at his own request, from the Marine Corps NROTC program he had nearly completed, thereby declining a hard-earned commission as an officer.

Coey’s motives for seeking to enlist in the Rhodesian Army rather than continue his service in the U.S. Marine Corps are probably more readily understandable in retrospect than they were at the time. Like many, he was repulsed by the emergence of the New Left on college campuses and saw nihilism clearly lurking behind its messages of free love and pacifism. Coey also concluded that the newly ascendant radical Left represented neither an authentic grassroots movement nor a bona fide countercultural alternative to the old liberal order. “The left wing has recognized the dehumanizing trends of industrial society,” he wrote, “but its activism to change society has been channeled by the real revolutionaries of Internationalism.”

Though a confirmed Cold Warrior, Coey was not a reflexive supporter of the Vietnam War. He discerned in the handling of that conflict, as well as that of the Korean War before it, the seeds of American overreach and eventual dissolution, a trend that seems to continue unabated today. As Coey’s older brother, Edward, would later write of American involvement in Vietnam, the American people had been given “The Choice Between False Alternatives,” made to choose “between a protracted no-win slaughter and a humiliating surrender.” The younger Coey did not believe this state of affairs could be attributed merely to incompetence or negligence on the part of those prosecuting the war either. The primary threat to the West, Coey concluded, was not Soviet or Chinese Communism but malevolent forces that emanated from within. Coey somewhat quaintly referred to these forces, which he considered more or less amenable to communism, simply as “the Conspiracy.”

While he was an apparent reader of Oswald Spengler and keenly aware of the depth of the civilizational crisis facing the West, Coey was not given to despair. He insisted those of European descent must struggle to the bitter end to save their inheritance, a deeply held conviction that determined his own choices. Coey well understood that “the fight for Western Civilization is not in the battlefield, but in the realm of the intellectual, spiritual, and psychological.” He lamented also “that under present conditions one cannot be a soldier without furthering the aims of the Internationalists, the liberals, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Zionists, or other alien groups.” Still, Coey longed above all else to do his part as a warrior in defense of what remained of his beloved civilization. Rhodesia, he believed, provided him the best and perhaps only opportunity to be of service in a worthy cause. Again, this is in spite of the fact that Coey already new the likely outcome:

“In the eyes of the mass media the black man can do nothing wrong and the white man can do nothing right, for even his sacrifices and help are discredited. The world cares nothing for Rhodesia, not even America, England, or the sister colonies. Rhodesia is to be sacrificed; they will not help Rhodesia. It has already been written off.”

Coey in Africa

Having successfully gained a position with the Rhodesian Special Air Service or SAS (an elite unit approximately equivalent to U.S. Army Special Forces), Coey attempted to communicate — perhaps imprudently — his concerns to the general public in a series of magazine articles and letters to newspapers in Rhodesia and South Africa. One article in particular, provocatively titled “The Myth of American Anti-Communism” and published in the Rhodesian Army journal Assegai, would land him in trouble with Rhodesian authorities despite, or perhaps because of, its appearance in an official publication. As a result, Coey was kicked out of the Rhodesian Army’s officer training program and eventually the SAS, placements he had received only after excelling at a grueling selection and training process. As Coey himself reflected:

“It was brought to my attention today that the article I submitted to Assegai magazine is considered ‘subversive,’ not because it is anti- Rhodesian or criticizes the State here, but because it ‘destroys misconceptions about America being pro-Western, and may lower morale if read by the general public.’ Although what I have written is true, it is feared that the public may not be able to stand the truth. The facts I have presented may make the article appear anti-American to those who do not yet understand how America is ruled by the CFR [Council on Foreign Relations] oligarchy, whose interest is total world power.”

Despite this and other setbacks, Coey would persist in his writing. Throughout his time in southern Africa he kept up an extensive correspondence as well as a journal which would eventually be published posthumously as a book. This book, A Martyr Speaks, would have undoubtedly proven an even more interesting historical document had not vast segments of Coey’s original journals been redacted by Rhodesian authorities following his death. Despite this censorship, Coey and what was left of his writings remained controversial enough that it would take his mother 13 years to find a willing publisher.

Though no longer being considered for a commission and forced to choose another unit to serve with, Coey would also persist in attempting to make a contribution militarily to Rhodesia. Even as he experienced moments of serious doubt and self-recrimination following his unceremonious expulsion from the SAS, Coey completed a medic course and transferred to the Rhodesian Light Infantry. There, despite resistance from some of his superiors, time and again he insisted on accompanying infantrymen into combat at great personal risk to himself, effectively introducing the role of combat medic into the Rhodesian Army:

“When I finish this tour of duty, I think that at least in this battalion [1st Battalion, The Rhodesian Light Infantry], which does the bulk of the fighting, that the medics will become like the Medical Corpsmen in the U.S. forces. I am the first of what are now called ‘Combat Medics’ here. There will be others; so I have accomplished something.”

Again though, Coey’s efforts were not always understood or appreciated. Some — though certainly not all — of his fellow foreign volunteers seem to have been merely adventurers or opportunists who did not share in his motivations or commitment. Among the Rhodesians, Coey’s older brother later wrote that the younger Coey “found some few Rhodesians awake, but generally…found a people too narrowly provincial to fully appreciate the worldwide implications of the savage attack being unleashed against their small country.” Coey himself wrote of the Rhodesians, for whom he came to have a special affection (indeed, he sought and was granted dual citizenship): “Most white Rhodesian families have been here for several generations and have nowhere else they can call home. They will stay and fight, I’m pleased to say. They understand their position racially and historically, but come short politically.”

An additional source of conflict for Coey — even with fellow believers — were his religious convictions. From a reading of his journals, it is evident that Coey’s faith was the primary source of his strength and allowed him to persevere where others often gave up. It also provided a source of comfort to him in his darkest moments — moments which were plentiful in combat in the African Bush. Many on the true Right have abandoned Christianity for a multitude of reasons, citing among other things its universalist pretensions and the tendency toward a dangerous and unhealthy cultural and racial self-effacement prevalent among contemporary Christians. Still, Coey possessed a vital and muscular understanding of the Faith similar to that which must have underlain much past Western dynamism. Coey, a Lutheran, attempted to share his belief with others through quiet example rather than a boorish evangelism and was dismayed at the errors into which many of his fellow Christians had fallen:

“I’ve been going to Baptist church services. The Gospel is preached there, but I have decided to go elsewhere because these Baptists are convinced that the Zionist takeover of Palestine is the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. They believe that the Second Coming of Christ is near, and think that they have the Revelation figured out completely. They expect to be ‘raptured’ away from the coming terror to help Christ rule in the Millennium. I remind them of Christ’s words, ‘My kingdom is not of this world,’ and ”No man knoweth the hour when the Son of God shall come again.’ But they choose to ignore that. . . .”

Neither, of course, did Coey abide the paralytic sentimentality of liberal Christians:

“Last night I talked with a Christian man who is convinced that he must never resort to violence to defend himself or fight in any way, even for his life and liberty. He feels that communism should not be opposed by arms, and that the Second Coming of Christ will occur before they could take over the world. He believes that all governments, no matter how evil or corrupt, are ordained by God. Christianity for this man has destroyed his instinct for survival, his will to resist evil. If every Christian were to think this, we would be doomed.”

The Significance of Coey

Coey was only one of a number of foreign volunteers who came from a variety of countries to fight for the lost cause of Rhodesia. Likewise, he was only the first of a total of seven Americans who would eventually die there. Of these foreigners, however, Coey was probably the most driven by principle, as well as the one most successful at communicating to the general public his motives for joining the Rhodesian forces.

Admittedly, at times in his journals Coey comes across as a somewhat fanatical figure — albeit one who is never truly unlikable. Though he presents a fairly consistent worldview in his writings, it is also helpful to remember that Coey did not style himself as an intellectual but instead a man of action. He considered it necessary to complement his words with deeds, and his short life was lived as one of selfless sacrifice in defense of not only a country that he considered to be at the very frontier of the West — but of all peoples of European descent and their shared civilization. Coey, importantly, always sought to lead by example and never played the sectarian:

“…I am helping to unify the Europeans, simply by my presence and association with these people. For they are coming to realize that there is no important difference between Americans, White Africans, or Europeans. The accents, dialects, and languages are superficial; the customs, religion, styles of government, and thinking are the same. I believe that only when all European peoples are unified, can communism and the alien conspiracy be smashed.”

There would be no such triumph of course, either in Rhodesia or elsewhere. Perhaps it was for the best that Coey didn’t live to experience the heartbreak of witnessing his adopted homeland fade into history.

In the final analysis, it was the very things that drove Coey to excel as a soldier that led to his early demise. He was possessed of that fatal combination of youthful idealism and, what is rarer, the will and strength of character to actually put that idealism into practice. As his older brother Edward recalled, Revilo P. Oliver of the University of Illinois had written Coey a letter prior to his death in which Professor Oliver had lauded him for having made “‘…the Choice of Achilles.'” That is, Coey had opted to die with glory in combat rather than to live a long but unremarkable life. Then again, Coey may have simply been following the dictates of fate. “I feel that I have found my historical role here,” he wrote, “and, once that is finished, I don’t know what I will do. . . .”

The anticipated moment came swiftly and unexpectedly. On July 19, 1975, as he was descending into a dry river bed in an attempt to aid two fallen Rhodesian Light Infantry troopers, Coey was struck and killed by terrorist bullets. One wonders if it can really be only a strange coincidence that he was hit in the head and in the heel? Whatever the case may be, his shining example of total selflessness stands in marked contrast to the widespread moral corruption of the modern military of his native United States, a military whose senior leaders obediently serve the alien and transnational forces that Coey believed he was fighting.

Though he is decades gone now, Coey’s timeless words continue to resonate. Yet it is fearful to think that they might outlast the civilization to which they immediately pertain, and perhaps might only serve as a warning to some future people:

“The basis of race, culture, and nation is vital for the survival of Western Civilization. Blood and soil, conservation and nationalism are what make a country and civilization sound, strong, and healthy. But faith is needed, faith in our way of life, our civilization, and faith in a Higher Destiny and the Divine Sanction of God….

“This generation of the West must believe when there is apparently no hope; it must obey, even if it means death; and it must fight to the end, rather than submit. Against the Spirit of Heroism no material force can prevail. Nothing can defeat that except inner decadence.”

Ultmately, Coey’s significance probably resides in whatever ability his memory has to inspire. As Dr. Anthony P. DiPerna, a professor of African history, observed in a letter to the Coey family: “I do not think John’s sacrifice was in vain. There are many episodes in history where those who gave their lives in a losing cause served as an inspiration to others who eventually carried the banner to victory.”

If Coey could join us today, he would not lose hope over the rapid deterioration of Western societies that has occurred in the decades since his death. He would doubtlessly implore us to redouble our efforts at self-preservation, however modest or even futile we may believe our individual contributions to be.

* * *

Reference:

Coey, John Alan. (1988). A Martyr Speaks: Journal of the late John Alan Coey.
CPA Books.

The 23 CIA agents, originally sentenced in November 2009 to five to eight years in prison, had their sentences increased to seven to nine years on appeal in what one of the defence lawyers described as a “shocking blow” for the US.

They were also ordered to pay 1.5 million euros (two million dollars) in damages to the imam and his wife for the 2003 abduction.

Washington has refused to extradite the agents, who all remain at liberty but now risk arrest if they travel to Europe.

Osama Mustafa Hassan, a radical Islamist opposition figure better known as Abu Omar, was snatched from a street in Milan in 2003 in an operation coordinated by the CIA and the Italian military intelligence agency SISMI.

Abu Omar, who enjoyed political asylum in Italy, was then allegedly taken to the Aviano US air base in northeastern Italy, then flown to a US base in Germany, and on to Cairo, where he says he was tortured.

Among the defendants sentenced on Wednesday was Bob Seldon Lady, former head of the CIA station in Milan, whose sentence was increased to nine years from eight. The other 22 agents had their sentences upped from five to seven years.

Guido Meroni, a defence lawyer for six of the 23 agents, said he believed the sentences had been increased because the court had rejected the mitigating circumstances that had led to the original judgement.

“The judges had originally ruled they had just been following orders, but it seems the court of appeals didn’t agree,” he told AFP.

“I am surprised. I didn’t think the sentences would be increased. Of course we will take it to the supreme court,” he added.

The court also acquitted the then head of Italian military intelligence, Nicolo Pollari, and his assistant Marco Mancini, because producing evidence against them would have violated state secrecy rules.

In an earlier hearing on Wednesday, the court ordered a re-trial for three other CIA officers, including the then CIA chief for Italy Jeffrey Castelli, because of irregularities in the appeal procedures.

In the first trial they had benefited from diplomatic immunity and had been acquitted.

Their lawyer, Alessia Sorgato, said the court had taken a hard line against the other agents.

“It’s a shocking blow for the Americans,” she said.

Amnesty International welcomed the judgement, but said that Italy’s role in the affair should also be examined.

“The Italian government and its officials should not be able to use ‘state secrecy’ as a shield to cover up human rights abuse,” said Amnesty’s counter-terrorism specialist Julia Hall.

“The government must engage in a full and fair accountability process even if its official are embarrassed or even vulnerable to criminal charges for their actions,” she added.

“Kidnapping is a crime, not a ‘state secret’.”

The “extraordinary rendition” programme was launched in 2003 by then US president George W. Bush and saw scores of suspects returned to their home countries, some of which were known to use torture.

Abu Omar’s US captors failed to take many standard precautions, notably speaking openly on cell phones, leaving investigators to suspect they had cleared their intentions with Italian intelligence.

Read the source article at the EU Times

CANADIAN Paul Fromm, a former schoolteacher who is either 1) a brave advocate for self-determination and free speech or 2) an evil neo-nazi bigot, depending on whether you’re talking to the man on the street or a spokesman for the immigrant lobby — has begun a campaign for mayor of Mississauga, Ontario, a sizable city which has seen a huge demographic change in recent years. Fromm is the fourteenth announced candidate in the race, which takes place next month. (ILLUSTRATION: Paul Fromm with Lady Michele Renouf on a recent speaking tour.)

Mr. Fromm is well known as a former Peel District School Board teacher who was fired in the late 1990s for refusing to curtail his political speech outside the classroom.

“Immigration is the issue,” Fromm said in the announcement of his candidacy. “It’s the two-ton elephant in the room that the municipal politicians don’t want to discuss. They just want to babble about the supposed benefits of ‘diversity.'”

Fromm lost his position teaching English at Applewood Heights Secondary School in 1997 after B’Nai Brith Canada and allied groups said that his opposition to enforced multiracialism and multiculturalism — which he expressed off of school grounds only — was “hate.”

The school board responded by removing Fromm from the classroom after 19 years on the job. The alleged “final straw” was when Mr. Fromm attended a memorial service for controversial writer and classics professor Revilo P. Oliver.

“He was terminated from his life’s work of teaching — just because he attended the funeral of a friend, who was someone the open-borders lobby didn’t like, and for peacefully opposing immigration,” according to Gideon Dene, editor of The American Mercury. “He even lost his teaching license. That’s outrageous,” Dene added.

Paul Fromm could still be considered a teacher: He spends his time speaking at venues all over the U.S. and Canada, doing a weekly radio show, and serving as a director of the Council of Conservative Citizens.

Immigration is the central issue that motivates him. Fromm says “Immigration impacts almost every major problem in Mississauga – overcrowded roads, dwindling farm land, the environment, welfare costs. If I’m elected, I’ll camp out on the Minister of Immigration’s front lawn and demand action,” he said. According to Fromm, immigration feeds overpopulation: “Will the roads be any less congested? Will welfare costs be lower? Will the environment be safer with nearly another 300,000 in Peel? Not likely. Mississauga is full. It’s more than doubled in size since I moved here in 1980.”

Fromm also heads the Canadian Association for Free Expression, a group which fights censorship, both public and private.

Paul Fromm’s Canada First Web site

Metapedia encyclopedia article on Paul Fromm

Radical Press weighs in on Paul Fromm

Exclusive to The American Mercury

TODAY THE FEDERAL RESERVE, America’s private central bank, began to ship billions of dollars to the central bankers of Europe in an attempt to stem the fall in the value of the euro created by Greece’s debt crisis. The total value of the deal could easily top $1 trillion according to experts. Americans — suffering from high unemployment and a tanking economy themselves — are expressing astonishment that 1) the “Fed” has the authority to unilaterally ship dollars to foreign bankers, and 2) that the desires of European-domiciled bankers come first in the Fed’s eyes over the needs of suffering, over-taxed, and unemployed Americans. (ILLUSTRATION: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke)

According to Congressman Dennis Kucinich, Congress did not authorize the move. “The Federal Reserve is no more Federal than Federal Express,” he said, which means that, as a consortium of private banks, the Fed can decide on its own and Congress can do essentially nothing about it. Pittsburgh Examiner financial commentator Joe Schoffstall added “Their ultimate goal, just like [that of] any other bank, is to maximize their net profit to the highest levels possible. None of this would be possible without the option of printing endless amounts of money at will….”

The dollars created by the Federal Reserve — which, according to analysts, will dilute and reduce the value of every dollar in Americans’ pockets — will be swapped for rapidly-declining euros, just as the euro’s value is plummeting, and for that very reason. The Fed is acting in concert with other central banks — including the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, the Swiss National Bank and others — in the so-called “dollar swap” effort.

The European Union and the International Monetary Fund had already pledged a $140 billion “defense package” for the euro, but it wasn’t enough. Estimates of the ultimate cost of the Fed’s dollar giveaway run from $900 billion to more than twice that amount — nearly as much or more in a single day’s pledge, critics say, as in a year of the disastrous Iraq war, which has already devastated the US economy.

The Federal Reserve’s decision today constitutes a reopening of a program started during the 2008 “global financial crisis” under which dollars are shipped overseas directly to foreign central banks. These central banks can then lend the dollars they receive to commercial banks in their home countries that they decide are “in need of dollar funding” to prevent their collapse — and make a huge profit in the bargain, courtesy ultimately of the US taxpayer.

The New York Times published information this morning which appears to buttress supporters of the deal, saying “The swap operations do not carry any exchange rate risks or credit risks… The Fed would not be a party to whatever dollar-denominated loans the European Central Bank may make to European financial institutions…. The Fed actually made money from the previous dollar swap program. The foreign central banks paid the Fed interest equivalent to what they made from lending the dollars.”

Critics say the “making money” and “no risk” claims are irrelevant, though: the dollar’s value is being diluted nevertheless and the fact that the lenders of these newly-created funds will make huge profits should be a source of outrage, not reassurance, they say.

According to American Mercury analyst Gideon Dene, “It is an outrage. But Americans have slept while the Fed has been given the power to control our entire economy. When private banks — and that is what the Federal Reserve is, the central hub of the private banking system — control your currency, you’re naturally going to see them act in their own interests instead of in the interests of American workers and small businesses. The Fed has essentially taken over one of the functions — you might say the most important function — of government: control of the currency. And so you get government by the bankers, of the bankers, and for the bankers.”

“And remember,” Dene added, “European-domiciled banks aren’t necessarily ‘European’ in any real sense. Look at the stockholders and you’ll find out that many of these characters are no more European than George Soros or the Rothschilds. These are internationalist, globalist ‘operators’ with no loyalty to any country. It’s both insane and tragic that we’ve handed over our currency to these private bankers. It’s like hiring Al Capone to run your Neighborhood Watch program.”

I asked Dene what could be done: “The problem actually goes deeper than the Fed,” he said. “The ‘Audit the Fed’ folks, if they get their way, will just uncover the tiny tip of a mountainous problem that’s been buried in ignorance and obfuscation. And that problem is fractional reserve banking. That’s the system that essentially is our financial system today. Most money is not created by the government. Most money is not created by the Fed either — most money is created by commercial banks through the ‘magic’ of the fractional reserve system, acting on demand deposits — like checking accounts. The Fed supervises and hopes things don’t get out of hand — and steps in when they do.

“The fractional reserve principle is based on the idea that most depositors won’t ask for their money all at once. So you can lend out 90 per cent. of your depositors’ funds without deducting the amount you lend from their accounts — in essence creating money.

“That’s a system that guarantees panics, failures and bubbles. And until people understand that, there will be no push for meaningful reform. Not one citizen in ten thousand has even heard of fractional reserve banking. And not one journalist in a thousand understands it. And those who are getting rich off of it are going to do everything they can to maintain that general ignorance. I do hope that what the Fed did today has an educational effect.”

THE LEADERSHIP of the United States and their British cohorts have been deceiving the public for more than 100 years. Now yoked to Zionism, they are a deadly combination — and they are also deadly to themselves. (pictured: General Stanley McChrystal)

I don’t think the rest of the world really understands what’s wrong with America.  They see America as this huge bully, killing and maiming millions of people worldwide while America itself is collapsing.  The world is right about that. They also see that most Americans are blind to the aggressive nature of Washington and its wars — not aware of it at all.

Clearly, the world has a suicidal, homicidal, insane entity on the loose. But no one really understands why.

The United States Department of Defense (DOD), as well as the Wall Street bankers, and just about every other corporation in America are no longer cognizant that their actions are self-defeating.  The DOD is no longer protecting its own country. The Federal Reserve is no longer printing money which has any value. Wall Street creates unbelievably complex Ponzi schemes which have no — or a negative — value.  The thing they all have in common is that they themselves don’t understand how their actions are contributing to their own defeat.  There’s a reason for this, and once you know it, it becomes obvious.

The United States of America is suffering from an epidemic of Asperger’s Syndrome, which is a form of autism which some say is caused by too much mercury in vaccines, or other toxins.

Asperger’s victims are capable of highly complex understanding of singular issues (compartmentalized, myopic thinking), but are unable to comprehend the ramifications of their actions in a larger picture. Asperger’s victims are often not cognizant that the tasks they perform are either useless, highly detrimental to themselves, or highly detrimental to others.  Asperger’s victims view the world through a myopic lens of complete self-absorption and are not capable of knowing they are dangerous to themselves or others.  They are also not able to show remorse or true empathy to anyone.

One of the hallmarks of Asperger’s victims is their ability to diagram highly complex issues which they themselves understand — while failing to see that the complex issue so diagrammed is peripheral or useless to the overall job they’re trying to perform. See the diagram below (click for a full-size image) — which was actually part of a presentation on how the US military and NATO can “win” their war of aggression in Afghanistan. (By the way, according to a commenter on National Public Radio today, US troops there are still “pumped up” for their missions by telling them “we” are fighting for vengeance for 9/11 — with which Afghans and the Taliban had precisely nothing to do.)

People capable of such myopic obsession are normally unemployable in real-word businesses, but those with this kind of mentality seem to have found a niche in the American financial, political, and military establishments.

Without self-awareness there is no hope.

Read about the Asperger-like “PowerPoint Rangers” who have come to dominate the junior officer corps in Afghanistan

The United States and their British cohorts have been deceiving the public
>> for more than 100 years.

A review of Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine by Joel Kovel (pictured) (2007), Pluto Press, ISBN-13 978 0 7453 2570 5, Paperback $20.48 at Amazon.com

AMAZON.COM likes to tell its book-buying customers which books other customers also bought who purchased the same book, and I typically glance at this unsolicited information with bemused detachment (Oh really? But do they have my taste, interest and background?) but occasionally, when the subject matter is particularly controversial or arcane, with piqued interest (Well, maybe there is some great book on this subject that these other folks know about that I am missing out on!). One book that caught my attention this way is Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine by Joel Kovel. I didn’t know Joel Kovel from Adam when I ordered this book on a whim, but I have a keen interest in the single-state solution to the problem of Zionism, and so the way he worded his title caught my interest. I duly ordered it, expecting it to contain an apology for a single democratic state in Palestine, one that might fortify my own view and give me new ammunition to use against skeptics, and die-hard two-staters.

That old saw that you can’t judge a book by its cover (or its subtitle) certainly held true for this one: Of course, the author does unequivocally advocate a single democratic state of all its citizens for Palestine/Israel (“Palesreal” as he provisionally refers to it, but I personally prefer how some wags dub it: “Palestein,” which makes me laugh out loud.) But very little of his book is really about that. When I first began reading it, I quickly began to suspect that it was little more than an autobiographical account, yet another Jewish apology for Jewishness with lip-service criticism of Israeli behavior — my critical cockles were fully raised.

But I could not have been more mistaken: Never in my life have I read such a disarming book! Thanks to it, my seasoned distrust of so-called progressive Jewish intellectuals (who always seem to turn out to have a soft spot for racist Israel) has been resolved, for here, in this man and in this book, I have encountered the 21st century reincarnation of Israel Shahak, that first great (Jewish) writer to expose from within the perfidy and counterfeit nature of Zionist Israel, and its relation to Judaism and to a very checkered Jewish history. Joel Kovel takes up where that late, great scholar left off, but interestingly, while he holds absolutely no quarter for Zionism, he does lead the reader to a reasonably sympathetic understanding of how this pernicious ideology could have developed in the first place. This ability to appreciate Zionism from the inside out is invaluable in enabling us to learn how this pernicious belief system can be dismantled, and this, of course, is the author’s ultimate and unstinting purpose.

A more accurate title for this book might be “The Psychopathology of Zionism.” In the bulk of its 299 pages, Kovel meticulously deconstructs Zionism’s deranged psychology, and the reader very soon appreciates that this author’s long years of education in psychiatry and psychoanalysis were not spent in vain. Successfully dealing professionally with the mentally disordered prepared him, in a way no other profession could have, to analyze that sickest puppy of all: Judeo-Zionism. In his comprehensive deconstruction of this world menace, Kovel pulls no punches. Unlike many non-Jewish writers who tiptoe around some of the landmines that are sure to explode into charges of “anti-Semitism” against those who take things too far for the ADL-types (and the many publishers who censor in fear of them), this author does not pussyfoot around anything, and his straightforward, candid recounting of Jewish history, warts and all, and of Zionist perfidy, are as refreshing as they are rare in Jewish (or any other) authors.

But how did Jewish Joel Kovel slip through the fine sieve of Zionist indoctrination? Don’t all Jews imbibe it with their mother’s milk? Well, this particular Jewish lad seems to have had a “wet nurse” in the person of his Aunt Betty, who had rejected Judaism at an early age, so completely that she left strict orders not to be given a Jewish funeral, to the great consternation of her kin. She turns out to have been the significant other in his life, and her death during his formative years snapped the last thread of his already tenuous identification with Judaism.

His father was a wing nut — “almost a fascist” — who opposed Zionism “for all the wrong reasons.” He was a dyed-in-the-wool, all-American Cold Warrior, you see, so the socialist veneer of Zionism (which was not so clearly understood as mere window dressing in its earlier days) incensed him. So of these two significant others, both of whom were extremely strong-willed and unafraid to hold unpopular opinions, his male role model was rooted in America, not Israel, while his significant-other female had rejected the family religion. The budding Joel Kovel took the best of both worlds and in turn rejected both Judaism and Zionism (the latter for reasons opposite to those of his father: because Zionist particularism trashes socialist universalism, and because the grafting of Zionism to capitalist imperialism made it antithetical to the project of socialist liberation from this war-mongering death phase of capitalism).

Now, I realize that this last statement is not going to sit well with every potential reader of Overcoming Zionism, and so, while I cannot sing the praises of this book loudly enough, I also need to add that it is not for everyone. Do not order this book for that right-winger on your Christmas list… get him Jeff Gates’ Guilt by Association instead. But, for anyone to the left of, say, Barack Obama; for that progressive anti-war friend of yours who circumlocutes whenever you bring up the subject of Israel; and most importantly, for that Jewish acquaintance who thinks that Israel can do no wrong (or better yet, who has intimated a few unsettling doubts s/he has about Israel) — this book is tailor-made. To the progressive it demonstrates conclusively that Israel is a willing partner in the very imperialism s/he anathematizes… to the Zionist-oriented Jew it shows him how deep is the hole that has been historically dug for Jews by Israel, and convinces him that there is no way out of it except to reject Zionism root and branch. “The overcoming of Zionism is its dissolution.”

Here is a sampler of some of the more valuable insights I gained from this masterful work :

“Nationalism is bad enough, but it can be sublimated through devices like the World Cup. Nationalism by divine decree — whether Judaic, Islamic, Christian or Hindu — and exercised with state power, is a living nightmare.” (p. 6)

“For the Orthodox nationalist, G-d’s will trumps Man’s conscience. This lifts the burden of guilt, or more often, keeps it from arising in the first place. The land is ours because G-d said so: all is justified; case closed. The codicil attached to this is barely stressed though it is strenuously lived out: that the fact of ‘G-d telling us so’ means in practice the submission to Rabbi this or that telling us so on the authority of the Halakhah [the entire body of Jewish laws and traditions]. These Jews wish to live like their medieval forebears, in rabbinically supervised communities within a larger state — which, as it turns out, finds them very convenient for its purposes.

“This is an escape without transcendence, even if one is never going to convince a religious nationalist, engorged with the feeling of spiritual power, of the fact. Escaping the onerous strictures of bad conscience is to remove the restraints upon the will except for those legislated from within the tribe through its rabbinical chiefs. It is to set up a downhill path at the end of which stand Meir Kahane and Baruch Goldstein. For such people, conscience is directly turned into enmity, and its judgmental quality turns into paranoia.” (pp. 180-181) [The foregoing calls to mind that title of Erich Fromm’s famous study of the last generation: Escape from Freedom. Indeed, it seems to be Kovel’s subtext that Zionism represents exactly the Jewish rejection of Enlightenment values, together with the emancipation of Jews that they engendered.]

“All human beings are equivalently unique; and anybody who fancies himself chosen by God is by that measure fallen. It is impossible to ground the notion of exceptionalism in any spiritual value inasmuch as the ground of spiritual value is the universality of our being within nature….

“The finer minds of the [Jewish] faith have sought to inflect the Covenant so that it means that Jews are obliged to develop themselves spiritually and ethically. Well and good, but at some point this higher development has to lead to a jettisoning of the Covenant itself. For once it is fulfilled, the sense of specialness can no longer be maintained without corrupting the Jewish faith.” (pp. 200-201) [Here as elsewhere in his book Kovel seems not far from Christian catholic thinking.]

“Justice is grounded in truth, and truth inheres in the whole of things, which is not a homogeneous totality but the contradictory, dialectically moving ensemble of the real. There is therefore no single truth, but there are greater and lesser truths. The obligation for people of good will is to find the greater truth and to speak it to the power that would suppress it. And one of the greater truths is that there is such a power. For present purposes we may locate its surface in the tentacular Zionist lobby, extending from the upper echelons of the American and Israeli security apparatuses through the chambers of civil society. It follows that every particle of truth about Israeli violations of human rights should also be an exposure of the Zionist lobby. Every truth about Israel needs to be an exposure of the lie that keeps pumping up the leaky gas bag of its legitimacy.

“The Lobby intimidates, especially in the United States whose transformation must therefore be a goal of anti-Zionist politics. But once exposed, it can be confronted. Telling the truth about the Lobby is not mere recitation; it should be a guide, rather, to bringing down its corrupt and illegitimate power. We need a campaign to force the Lobby to register as an agent of a foreign power; and another to build data banks to expose those who collaborate with it; and to eliminate the special privileges enjoyed by Israel as tax breaks, technology transfers, indeed, the whole grotesque edifice of handouts, loan guarantees, technologies of death, and the like, which burden US taxpayers while bringing endless misery and destruction to Palestine and Lebanon; and to protest Israel’s nuclear arsenal and bring it under international control; and to keep bringing suits for violation of human rights against the likes of Avi Dichter and Moshe Ya’alon; and to insist that the media carry alternative views, and to build alternative media that do; and to expose the Israeli ‘spies’ who clustered around the events of September 11, and to re-open investigation into the attack on the USS Liberty in 1967.” (pp. 232-233) [Here we see how neatly Kovel’s Overcoming Zionism and Gates’ Guilt by Association , both anti-Zionist classics in their own time, reflect one another in their perspective, approach and conclusions, while the latter approaches the question of the Israeli-Zionist threat to America from the purely socio-political angle, while the former stays focused on its moral and psychopathological aspects: each is first an exposé and then a battle plan, like two valiant armies trapping the common enemy in a pincers movement; both might be said to be arguing that when it comes to anti-Zionism, faith without works is dead.]

Lest anyone should think that the ever-vigilant Zionist watchdogs gave the good professor a free pass for his trenchant criticism of their pathological belief system, rest assured that he has paid his dues: Just as Norman Finkelstein (author of The Holocaust Industry) was railroaded out of his academic position (even more incongruously by a Catholic university) for his anti-Zionist views, Joel Kovel lost his special professorship at Bard College, he reports, as a direct result of his anti-Zionist activism and publications. The decision to remove him was made by the College’s president, Leon Botstein, director of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra since 2003, and by others with clear conflicts of interest. Those interested in the sordid details of Professor Kovel’s forced retirement can read the details on his Web site: http://www.joelkovel.org/archives.html

In the end, what must be said of Joel Kovel is that he is the real McCoy …a true mensch. This Yiddish term, connoting decency, uprightness, fortitude and firmness of purpose, has almost lost all reference to real individuals in modern times, but Joel Kovel has solidly demonstrated that this is not an archaic concept… there is at least one Jew today who deserves the sobriquet. Get this book and see for yourself!

Source: Rebel News Service

This is the speech that the President was to have delivered on April 10, 2010 at the Polish War Cemetery in Katyn during the ceremony of 70th Anniversary of the Katyn crime. He was killed, along with many senior members of his government, just before this speech was to have been delivered.

Dear Representatives of the Katyn families! Dear Ladies and Gentlemen!

In April 1941 more that 21,000 Polish prisoners from NKVD cages and prisons were murdered. That genocidal crime was committed by Stalin’s will, by order of the supreme authorities of the Soviet Union. The alliance of the Third Reich and the USSR via the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, and the aggression against Poland on September 17, 1939 found its astonishing culmination in the Katyn massacre.

Not only in the forests of Katyn but also in Twer, Kharkov and other known and still unknown tragic places, the citizens of II Rzeczpospolita (the Second Polish Republic) were killed. These were people who were creating the foundations of our statehood, who were relentless in the service to our Motherland.

At the same time the families of the killed and the thousands of pre-war borderland citizens who were deported to the depth of the Soviet Union where their silent sufferings were marking the way of Poland’s Eastern Golgotha. Katyn was the most tragic station on this way. Polish officers, clergymen, civil servants, policemen, border guards and prison service officials were exterminated without legal proceedings and court sentences. They became the victims of the war that had not been announced. They were murdered with total disregard of the rights and conventions of the civilized world. Their dignity as the soldiers, Poles and human beings was trampled.

Death caves were supposed to hide the bodies and the truth about the genocide forever. The families of the victims were stripped of their rights for public mourning, sorrow and dignified commemoration of their closest loved ones. The soil had covered the traces of the crime and the lie was supposed to erase it from peoples’ memory.

The hiding of the truth about Katyn — the effect of the decision of those who planned the crime — became one of the communist policy fundamentals in post-war Poland: it became the founding lie of the PRL (the Polish People’s Republic). That was the time when for remembering the truth about Katyn one could pay a very high price. Nevertheless, the families of the murdered and other brave people were true to that memory; they were defending it and were passing it to the next generations of Polish people. They carried it through the times of the communist governments and confided it to their fellow citizens of free and independent Poland. That is why we owe respect and gratitude to all of them and especially to the Katyn Families. On behalf of the Republic of Poland I am offering thanks to you, because by defending the memory of your loved ones you have saved an important dimension of our Polish consciousness and identity.

Katyn became the most painful wound of Polish history; it also has been poisoning relations between Poles and Russians for decades. Let us make the “Katyn wound” finally heal and scar over. We are already headed in that direction. We, the Polish people do appreciate the activities of the Russians during recent years. We have to follow the way that brings our peoples closer to each other. We cannot stop or turn back.

All the circumstances regarding the Katyn crime must be fully investigated and clarified. It is important that the guiltlessness of the victims becomes legally confirmed and that all the documents regarding the crime are disclosed, so that the lie about Katyn disappears forever from the public sphere. We demand these steps primarily in memory of the victims and out of respect for the sufferings of their families. We also demand these things in the name of common values that alone can create the foundations of trust and partnership between the neighboring peoples of all Europe.

Let us together pay homage to the murdered, and let us pray for them. Praise to the heroes! Honour to their memory!

Read the original article at PressPublica Poland

EVEN AT this American Mercury editor’s home in Baltimore, the sun seemed an unusual color of goldenrod yellow in the afternoon. The cause? A trace of volcanic ash, though far less than what Europe is experiencing.  Thousands of passengers have been stranded at airports after a cloud of ashes from an Icelandic volcano eruption spread across that continent.

Europe’s air-traffic control center said more than 15,000 flights would be canceled today and several nations have completely shut down their airspace.

Scientists warned that the fallout from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in southeastern Iceland could take several days to clear. Aviation authorities have no firm idea when the skies will clear up sufficiently for normal air travel.

Europe’s three largest air hubs — London’s Heathrow, Paris’s Charles de Gaulle and Frankfurt’s eponymous air center — were closed. Airport technicians say that volcanic ash can cause jet engines to malfunction and greatly reduces visibility, in some cases creating fine scratches in aircraft windshields so that visibility remains zero until repairs are made.

Britain, Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Belgium and Holland shut down all or most of their flights.

France, Germany, Finland, Russia and Spain experienced major closures, although Norway and Sweden have began to ease restrictions.

Passengers are understandably becoming frustrated. A customer at London’s Heathrow told The American Mercury via telephone that there’s no information on when her flight will be rescheduled, and that announcements indicate there may be intermittent delays for weeks.

The ash cloud is moving slowly, about 18,000 to 36,000 feet in the air and is generally not visible from the ground, though reports as far away as the U.S. East Coast indicate it is intensifying the colors of sunrises and sunsets and even lending abnormal yellow or orange tints to daytime skies. Most of the ash is over Europe now and predicted winds from the north may make the situation more severe today.

Icelandic airports are, surprisingly, open, as the wind has blown the thicker part of the cloud away from the island nation. The volcano under Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull glacier erupted for the second time in less than a month on Wednesday. Huge pieces of ice as large as buildings crashed down from the glacier on Thursday, as ice that had been frozen for centuries suddenly melted from the hot gas. Hundreds were evacuated due to floods. Roads have been closed in parts of the country due to ash fall, and farmers and animal activist are concerned about possible fatalities of wildlife and livestock due to ingestion of the fine particles.

Though there have been no ash falls reported elsewhere, health authorities are warning people to stay indoors if one begins in your area.

AS ALISON ARIEFF recently reported, ‘One has only to look at the fatalities in Chile as compared to Haiti: though the Chilean earthquake registered 8.8 on the Richter scale, the country experienced 279 fatalities, compared to Haiti’s 230,000 from their less powerful 7.0 earthquake. (Another reason for the difference, of course, had to do with where and how the two earthquakes struck.)

‘Though daunting, Chile’s struggles will likely resolve themselves more quickly: just a week after the earthquake struck, drinking water, electricity, communications, banking and basic commerce had already been restored to over 90 percent of the affected areas. This is in dramatic contrast to Haiti, where, explains Sebastian Gray, professor of architecture at Universidad Católica de Chile, “because of the characteristics of the earthquake and the quality of construction, the destruction and loss of life was enormous.” In Chile, he says, the country’s strict building codes “accounted for the overall good performance of modern structures after the earthquake.”‘

Chile, with a population even more European in origin than that of the United States, is a First World country with everything that implies — from a relative lack of corruption to a high standard of engineering to competence in its emergency services. Haiti is a Third World country with everything that that implies, including corruption and rampant incompetence. Haiti’s national IQ is among the lowest worldwide, while Chile’s is comparable to many First World nations’. Is there a genetic basis for the differences that no amount of aid can change?

An observer from Long Island, M. E. Hansen, stated “I don’t think the developed world has yet to appreciate how throwing masses of money at a problem brings out the worst in people. As miserable as things are now for Haitians, they will become infinitely worse when rival gangs of corrupt officials begin fighting over the money, and using it to buy arms rather than construction materials. How will the United Nations and former President Clinton, et al, prevent officials from using the money to hire private armies rather than construction workers?

“If one needs precedent, look to sub-Saharan Africa, sixty years on from ‘foreign aid.’ What we see are war lords, private armies, weapons in the hands of evil people and those they have coerced into complicity. We see murder and violence as endemic conditions. What we do not see is real, sustained improvement in the lives of ordinary people. Women and children are constant victims: ill-fed, and often living in refugee camps.”

African-American spokesmen dispute the purely genetic explanation for Third World — and particularly African — problems, like the ones that plague Haiti. Without Western interference (often in the form of well-meaning aid and imposition of Western political forms), they say Africans worldwide would find a natural, sustainable balance with the environment — and a political path uniquely their own.